Deborah Valenze

Deborah M. Valenze is an American historian and professor known for her work in British cultural and economic history.^[1] She is currently the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History at Barnard College, Columbia University.^[2] Her research and teaching have covered the impact of political economy on social thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the cultural history of economic life in Europe, the history of food and commodities, women’s work and industrialization, and the social history of religion.^[3]

Valenze was born in Plattsburgh, New York, in 1953, where she attended public schools through high school.^[1] At the age of eight, she began studying the violin, the start of a life-long passion for music.^[4] She attended Radcliffe College, Harvard University, where she majored in European history.^[5]

She graduated Magna cum laude in 1975 and spent the next year on a Radcliffe scholarship as an independent researcher at the Institute of Historical Research in London.^[4]

She earned her doctorate at Brandeis University in 1982 and taught there, at Smith College, and at Worcester Polytechnic Institute before becoming an assistant professor at Barnard College.^[6]

Valenze joined the faculty at Barnard College, Columbia University, in New York in 1989.^[7] She received tenure in 1995 and became the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History in 2015.^[4]

She was also a research associate at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University and acting director of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School during the 1997–1998 academic year.^[6] In 1998-99, she was a Fellow at the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College.^[8]

Valenze was President of the North American Conference on British Studies from 2021 to 2023. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in Britain. She is currently a Board Member of the American Friends of the Institute of Historical Research, London.^[9]

Her scholarly work has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation,^[10] the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Yale Center for British Art, the American Association of University Women, and the Fulbright-Hays Program.^[11]

Valenze frequently participates in public lectures and academic panels on the cultural and historical significance of early modern Britain, the history of agriculture and the environment, and changing ideas about food production.^[12] She is recognized by peers and reviewers for her interdisciplinary approach and her original contributions to the fields of political economy, food history, and gender studies.^[13][14]

Valenze was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 2011. Milk: A Local and Global History appeared that same year.^[15] A UK reviewer called the book a "fascinating history."^[1]

Valenze’s body of work is known for its interdisciplinary methodology, drawing from anthropology, economics, gender studies, and cultural theory.^[3]

• Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England (1985)^{[16][17][18][16]}
• The First Industrial Woman (1995)^{[19][20][21][22][23][24]}
• The Social Life of Money in the English Past (2006)^{[25][26][27][28]}
• Milk: A Local and Global History (2011)^{[1][29][30][29][31]}
• The Invention of Scarcity: Malthus and the Margins of History (2023)^[32][33][34]

• Valenze, Deborah (2023-06-27), "Immortal Malthus", The Invention of Scarcity, Yale University Press, pp. 1–18, doi:10.12987/yale/9780300246131.003.0001, ISBN 978-0-300-24613-1, retrieved 2025-06-30
• Valenze, Deborah M. (2011). Milk: a local and global history. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11724-0.
• Valenze, Deborah M. (2006). The social life of money in the English past. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-85242-5.
• Valenze, Deborah M. (1995). The first industrial woman. American Council of Learned Societies. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-508981-3.
• Valenze, Deborah M. (2017). Prophetic sons and daughters: female preaching and popular religion in industrial England. Princeton Legacy Library (1st ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-65500-0.

• Valenze, Deborah (2024). "Presidential Address. Revise that Syllabus: Malthus and the Historical Imagination". Journal of British Studies. 63 (4): 761–771. doi:10.1017/jbr.2024.180. ISSN 0021-9371.
• Valenze, Deborah (2020), "Foreword Persistence: The nature of milk", Milk and Dairy Foods, Elsevier, pp. xix–xxi, doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-815603-2.09999-x, ISBN 978-0-12-815603-2, retrieved 2025-07-03
• Deobrah, Valenze (2016). "Cheese Factor". In Donnelly, Catherine (ed.). The Oxford Companion to Cheese. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199330881.
• Valenze, Deborah (2013-09-01). "E. P. Thompson and the Curricular Turn". Labor. 10 (3): 49–52. doi:10.1215/15476715-2149557. ISSN 1547-6715.
• Deobrah, Valenze, Abala, Ken (ed.), "Culinary history of food", Routledge International Handbook of Food Studies, Routledge, doi:10.4324/9780203819227.ch10, ISBN 978-0-203-81922-7, retrieved 2025-07-03
• Valenze, Deobrah (2004). "Gender in the Formation of European Power, 1750-1914". In Hanks, Merry Wiesner-; Meade, Teresa A. (eds.). A Companion to Gender Histor. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9780470692820.
• Valenze, Deborah ValenzeDeborah (2005-01-01), "Dairy Farming", The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acref/9780195105070.001.0001, ISBN 978-0-19-510507-0, retrieved 2025-07-03
• Valenze, Deborah (1996), "Is Marxism Still a Useful Tool of Analysis for the History of British Women?", Debating Gender, Debating Sexuality (in German), New York, NY ; London: New York University Press, pp. 181–192, retrieved 2025-07-03
• Valenze, Deborah (1991). "THE ART OF WOMEN AND THE BUSINESS OF MEN: WOMEN'S WORK AND THE DAIRY INDUSTRY c . 1740–1840". Past and Present (130): 142–169. doi:10.1093/past/130.1.142. ISSN 0031-2746.
• Smith, Ruth L.; Valenze, Deborah M. (1988). "Mutuality and Marginality: Liberal Moral Theory and Working-Class Women in Nineteenth-Century England". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 13 (2): 277–298. doi:10.1086/494406. ISSN 0097-9740.